


in which patton works at build-a-bear

by whimsicaltwine



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Kid Deceit Sanders, Teen Virgil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22836685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicaltwine/pseuds/whimsicaltwine
Summary: Virgil takes his little brother, Dee, to go get a stuffed animal and ends up getting adopted instead.Featuring difficult math problems, loneliness, and at least one stuffed bear.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Comments: 29
Kudos: 147





	in which patton works at build-a-bear

**Author's Note:**

> This wonderful idea is from my wonderful friend who is wonderful 100%

“Now give the heart a kiss, because you’ll always love each other,” the worker says, cradling his own little red heart in his palms like a baby bird, or a firefly that crawls over your hand as you shelter it in between your palms and hunch down to get a better look. Around him, the kids each give their hearts a little kiss, some timidly, ducking their heads as they press their lips to it before tugging it close to their chests, and some with unrestrained enthusiasm, giving the little hearts a loud smack. One kid in particular does it with a flourish, holding his newly christened heart up in the air for all to see. 

Virgil sighs. He agreed to tag along so he could lurk in the shadows of Hot Topic, sifting through t-shirts and jewelry and pins to his heart’s content while his aunt totes Dee around, but now here he is, an unfortunate blot of black ink fallen to the cheery page that is build-a-bear. Dee, with his half-finished stuffed snake clutched in his little hands, is tossing an impressively judgmental look at the pair besides him, who wear paper crowns and vibrate with enough energy to power the whole mall.

Tossing his head to get his hair out of his eyes, Virgil shoves his hands in his hoodie pocket, tracing the hard edge of his phone with one finger, up around the corner and across the side and then back the other way again, a steady circuit of motion that focuses the ambient electricity buzzing all around his body into that one point, into the possibility that Dee’ll finish and their aunt won’t be done browsing scented candles and Virgil will be set to drift alone in the mall with a six year old who has no time for rules if they don’t benefit him. Desperate for a reprieve from the worrying, he yanks his gaze off of the entrance to the store and over to the worker, who’s name tag reads “Patton.”

Patton looks like exactly the kind of person you would find working in a place like this. With a well-worn blue polo shirt, round glasses, dorky kakhi shorts, and a smile like cookies still warm from the oven, he fits in the shop like he’s just part of the brand. Little clothes, buttons and thread, the hearts, and Patton, one in every location. He looks like the type of person who would give really good hugs.

As the kids tuck in their hearts and hand over their stuffed animals for him to sew, Virgil watches. “Are you exited to bring Sir Bearington along on your adventures?” Patton asks one of the paper crown kids, who promptly launches into a grand and rambling tale of knights and princesses and the best sitting spot in the tree in his front yard, a story that Patton picks up off the floor and gathers in his hands to treasure.

Just as those two leave and Dee steps up, Virgil catches a fleeting movement like the flash of a fish in a river, or the glint of something shiny on the ground. With a deft flick of his fingers, Patton sets the little heart he’d used as an example earlier back into the container on the counter next to him.

And maybe it’s the weight of a bustling school hallway with nobody sparing him a second glance, or the tension that winds up in his shoulders as he watches other people living their lives as he sits in his room doing noting, or some pathetic wish for the thrill of teen rebellion, but for some reason, while Patton sews up Dee’s snake and asks him what he’s going to name it, Virgil steps up behind him, makes sure nobody’s looking, and snatches the heart out of the bin. “Make sure to take good care of him, okay?” Patton is telling Dee, and then they’re stepping away to go pay. The tightly curled sting in Virgil’s chest unwinds. He’s gotten away with it.

Just as soon as his foot has hit the floor again, though, there’s a noise from behind him, and Virgil freezes in his tracks. “Hold on, kiddo,” Patton says, and slowly, slowly, Virgil turns around, dread pulling his heart down through his chest. He’s going to get in trouble and he’ll be reported to his aunt who’ll start thinking he’s some kind of juvenile delinquent or Patton will judge the hell out of him or — or he’ll have that smile, the one like a sun-warmed afternoon, set right in his hands. “Take one for the road,” says Patton, and while Virgil stares at him, eyes wide with shock, he hands over another heart, which Virgil takes with shaky fingers. He lets air rush back into his lungs as the world restarts and Patton turns to the next kid. 

Tucking both hearts into his hoodie pocket, Virgil turns to the counter, where his aunt is paying as Dee winds his new friend around his neck and shoulders. Patton’s gaze follows him out of the store and into the stream of strangers that fill the mall.

xxxxxx

This is stupid. This is so goddamn stupid and Patton might now even be working right now and probably doesn’t remember him anyway and Virgil hates himself for pushing through waves of anxiety to finish his driver’s test because now his mom’s car is in the mall parking garage and he’s standing outside Build-A-Bear like an idiot and oh god what if someone from school sees him here?

Before people can start to stare at him for standing completely still in the middle of the walkway for an extended amount of time, Virgil clenches his fists and ducks into the store.

A few kids and weary-looking parents mill around the cubbies and racks inside, but Virgil walks right past them, past the row of limp stuffed animal bodies and past the racks of little clothes and further into the store, where he catches sight of a blue shirt and khakis. He drifts to a stop at the edge of a group of a few kids, hovering on the outskirts and feeling the courage to say hi slip though his fingers. As the group of kids dissipates, setting off towards the check-out counter one by one, Virgil worries at the end of his hoodie sleeves, shifting his weight from foot to foot and letting his eyes dart around the room in desperation for anything, anything to distract him—

“Oh, it’s you!” a cheery voice says, pulling him out of his thoughts. “I didn’t catch your name last time.”

“It’s, uh, Virgil,” he stammers, shrinking into his hoodie. Patton grins.

“Nice to meet you! If you don’t know already, my name’s Patton. Are you here to make yourself a new best friend?”

“No,” Virgil says, throwing the word out in a rush because stuffed animals do _not_ fit his aesthetic, especially when you have to jump up and down three times and kiss a little stuffed heart to “bring them to life.” “No, I’m just, um, I mean I kinda don’t really know why I’m here.” The sentence hangs in the air for a moment, big and awkward and unwieldy, before Patton swiftly bats it away by melting into a soft smile that curls itself around Virgil’s shoulders and shushes the worries zinging around his mind.

“That’s fine,” Patton says. “I’ve got an extra chair, you can sit over here and hang out for a while. My shift ends in an hour, so you can stay until then.” As Virgil creeps over to the chair, each step hesitant, like he’s about to set off a hidden trap, Patton chatters on, continuing, “It’s pretty slow on weekdays after five or six, since there aren’t too many families out and about, so there’ll be time to chat for a while. It’s nice to have someone to talk to, ‘cause it gets kinda lonely sometimes.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Virgil says, shrugging. “I mean, I’m fine on my own, get to listen to a lot more music that way, but like, I get it.” Poking his hands out of his hoodie sleeves so he can fiddle with the strings, he sends a glance back to the store entrance to make sure he’s not keeping Patton from doing his job, but the place is practically deserted, a haunting echo of the lively scene from last weekend painted in the impersonal tones of fluorescent lighting.

Cocking his head in interest, Patton shuffles in his seat until he’s sitting cross-legged with his hands set lightly on his gray socks, which have some sort of animal spritzed all over them like polka-dots. “What kind of music do you listen to?”

“Uh, just stereotypical emo music.”

“Oh, fun!” Patton says, despite the fact that he looks like someone spontaneously born of bubbles who is the farthest possible thing from edgy. Virgil gives him an amused little smile, which sets Patton aglow like Christmas lights. “Do you have a favorite song?”

With Patton’s cheerful energy winding around the space, tangling up in Virgil’s hoodie strings, wrapping around the legs of their chairs, and arching over their heads to rain down a honey-flavored sense of contentment, the hour passes in skips and leaps and rambling stories until it’s gone by all too fast, leaving golden light in its wake. Virgil stands up. “It’s time for you to go home,” he points out, pulling his phone and earbuds out of his pocket.” As Patton twists around to look at the clock behind him, Virgil takes a few steps towards the exit.

“Huh, would you look at that,” Patton says, but when he turns back around to see Virgil’s retreating form, all the passive, easygoing drift leaves his voice. “Wait, Virgil!” he calls, his footsteps tracing a half-frantic path across the floor as he digs around in his pocket. “Here’s my schedule, so you’ll know when I’m here. There won’t be time to talk on the Saturdays, but any other time is fine. You can bring your homework, if you want to,” he says, handing over a crumpled piece of paper. Virgil lets his eyes sweep up, up, up from the paper in his hand to the pocket on Patton’s shirt to the strawberry-sweet hopeful look on his face and stares for a moment, rooting around in his brain for something to say.

“Uh, yeah,” he ends up with, “yeah, I’ll come by.” A beat. “I like talking to you.” 

With that, Patton beams, and it’s like the heavy clouds of an overcast day have split to wash the world in honeydew sunshine. “Great!” he chirps. “I’ll see you next time, then.”

With a little sigh, Virgil lets himself collapse into a smile, his shoulders falling into a comfortable slouch. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’ll see you next time.” With that, he turns, gives a little wave, and walks out of the store. 

xxxxxx

“Oh my god,” Virgil moans, letting his head fall onto the table, where it’s cushioned by the thick pages of his math book. “I’m going to kill myself and hang out around here as a ghost so I can talk to you without having to deal with any of my problems. Especially math problems. Conics have no rights.” With a little frown, Patton leans over to get a better look, giving Virgil’s shoulder a nudge.

“Well, I can’t help you if you’re head is covering the page, kiddo,” he says, to which Virgil gives a deep sigh, the kind that only comes as your soul leaves your body due to school work.

“What are you going to do?” he laments. 

“I’m a few months away from a degree in biostatistics and my best friend is working on his doctorate in astrophysics, so I’ve seen my fair share of math problems.”

“Oh,” Virgil stutters. “Uh, sorry.” Pushing the textbook and his paper over to Patton, he ducks his head, letting his hair shade his eyes as he fixes them on his backpack, a blush rising to his cheeks.

“Nothing to be sorry about, kiddo. Now let me see — oh! Are you just having trouble getting started? Alright, so with hyperbolas, when y is first, the graph is up and down, like this,” he says, drawing a quick little doodle on the margins of Virgil’s paper. “And then to find the rest of the fraction, you use the points where the y value is the only one that changes. Got it?”

“I think so, yeah.” Pulling everything back over in front of him, Virgil hunches down and gets back to work, the staccato taps that his pencil makes as he marks across the paper keeping time to Patton’s idle humming. He hardly even notices when Patton stands up and leaves. It’s not until the soft tap of his footsteps wanders back into his range of hearing that Virgil peels himself up from his textbook, it’s worn-out pages greeting the light once again as his shadow retreats to watch Patton walk back over, a purple blob of fabric clutched in his hand. “A kid stop by?”

“Nope,” Patton answers simply. As he gets to work stuffing the toy, which Virgil can make out is a plain purple bear with lavender pads on its hands and feet, Virgil watches, soaking in the way he moves his hands with the deliberate gentleness of someone holding a tiny puppy or a precious keepsake, turning the toy over and occasionally giving it a little squeeze until he deems his work satisfactory, holding it up in the air in front of him. Virgil sets his pencil down. Sifting though his bucket of hearts until he finds a plaid one, Patton holds it up in the air for a moment, as if checking for flaws, before pressing a soft kiss to the fabric, one that lingers for a moment or two like he’s filling it to the brim with the same warm kind of love that dwells in the way his eyes light up when he catches sight of Virgil, the one that hides in the fond tones of his voice when he calls somebody kiddo. With a decisive nod, he tucks it into the stuffing, sews up the bear, and plops it right on top of Virgil’s textbook. Virgil blinks.

The bear has silky, smooth fur that shines under the store’s lights, and little squares of white reflect off of its black plastic eyes. Jolting his gaze back up to Patton, Virgil opens his mouth to speak, but the words get jammed in his throat, so he closes it before trying again. “For me?” he croaks. Patton smiles, taking his hand.

“For you, kiddo.” Carefully, reverently, Virgil pokes a hand out of his hoodie sleeve as he reaches forward to take the bear off his math book and bring it closer, emotions filtering through his chest like sand shifting and settling as it falls through an hourglass. He sweeps his thumb across its chest in a slow arc. It’s soft. 

The world feels far away, like a sound you can’t quite hear, drowned out by the emotions and thoughts that tangle around in his brain, and Virgil doesn’t move until Patton scoots forward in his chair to rest a hand on his shoulder, where its weight settles itself in his chest. “Aw, kiddo, don’t cry,” he says, and only then does Virgil realize that there are tears leaking from his eyes. He sniffles. This is such a stupid thing to cry over, but he can’t bring himself to care, and the smile that bubbles up from somewhere lodged deep at the bottom of his ribcage breaks free with an incredulous little laugh as Virgil hugs the toy to his chest. 

“Thank you,” he says, some of the weight of loneliness falling from his shoulders and onto the ground, where it disappears into nothingness. “Thank you.”


End file.
